


Sweetly Played

by orphan_account



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: AH YES, All the classic TBGB tropes, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Extremely ambiguous relationship, Gen, I do love to be predictable, It's another fucking AU because apparently I can't write anything else, Massive amounts of backstabbing, Pining, again hardly surprising, and a brief appearance by Gordon Brown's hatred of Peter Mandelson, but come on it's Blair and Brown what's new, what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:35:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5335991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A random prompt generator gave me-</p><p><strong>Setting:</strong> Botanical Garden<br/><strong>Genre:</strong> Pining<br/><strong>Trope:</strong> Soulmates (Names, timers, identifying marks, etc.)<br/><strong>Prompt:</strong> Reverse Chronology</p><p>-so. Blair. Brown. Pining. Backwards. In a garden. Which exists in a universe where people are only able to hear once they meet their soulmate.</p><p>Well, why not?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweetly Played

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hallowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallowgirl/gifts).



AFTER

 

It’s cold.

 

Voiceless people drift over the snow like dark ghosts. The morning sky is a dismal moonshine-white. The whole city stands still; he can feel it. It’s been silent for years now.

 

And even the Botanical Garden has surrendered, at last, to the hand of winter; the grass is pale and heavy with frost, and the bare branches are dark and overlaid with snow.

 

He looks out a moment over the green ice of the ornamental lake.

 

 _No roses_ , he mumbles. Voice failing. It collapses, melts in his throat like the snowflakes on skin. Breath fogs noiselessly in front of him. He doesn’t know whether he speaks at all.

 

 _They withered all_ , says a voice behind him, one he can’t hear, _when my father died._

 

He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t care. Tony is a painted man before a painted sky; a liquid prisoner in walls of glass.

 

Other people are just for show. Winter was always hideous and now it is bereft.

 

-

 

THE END

 

Gordon’s voice is a rumble of soft vowels and he’s smiling, eyes soft and bright and the lines of his face creased with it and it’s making Tony giddy as it always did. He’s back in the Botanical Gardens again with Gordon, like it used to be, and there’s autumnal sunlight lying downy on the blushing leaves and there’s Gordon’s smile and the last late roses of the year and-

 

“...terminal.”

 

All the world drops dead. Tony’s heart beats out something craven and unsteady.

  
_What._

 

Gordon’s eyes, still smiling, flit up and across him.

 

“Four months at best.”

 

Four months.

 

_No. Listen. Listen, I have a doctor-_

 

But the smile is still there, bright and soft. Gordon, forever as solemn and as holy as a Catholic saint in stained glass, has become just as breakable.

 

“I’m sure you have, Tony. I don’t want them.”

 

_But_

“No. No. I don’t want them.” He’s never sounded so serene or so strong or so Scottish; Tony might cry. All the reds and the yellows and the blue, blue sky blur treacherously in his eyes.

 

“I’m going to die happy,” Gordon adds. Then a little huff of laughter.

 

“Who knows- I might even have four months.”

 

Everything is quiet around them. Even the birds sing softly.

 

(Two weeks later, Tony will wake up in Zurich to find the whole city quieter than a church.

 

After that, he’ll never hear birdsong again.)

 

-

 

THE RECONCILIATION

 

Tony sits by the leadwort, nervous as he hasn’t been for years. He can hear children at play, somewhere. It makes him feel very old and very rich and very tired, but he blesses the sound anyway.

 

He pretends not to notice Gordon Brown, moving mechanically between the flowerbeds, until the bench creaks under the new weight.

 

“Hullo. Again.”

 

God, he’s still so _Scottish_. Even now, those gruff tones make Tony’s heartbeat falter and race.

 

“Hi.” Bit breathy. Bit eager. Bit _please-Gordon-push-me-up-against-this-bench-and-have-your-way-with-me_. They’re too old for that now. Gordon probably always was. He tries to moderate his voice.

 

“Hi,” he tries again. Gordon’s eyes flit briefly up to meet his. Tony considers saying, _I’ve missed you for two decades now and it still feels like being parted from a limb or a vital organ._

He considers saying, _I fucked up and I was right to do everything I did but that doesn’t mean I fucked up any less._

He considers saying, _I liked it better when we dedicated every day to making each other miserable than now, when our lives never really interact._

It wouldn’t come out right, though.

 

Tony says,

 

“Thanks for- well. You know what.” And then on some impulse- “I wasn’t sure you’d understand.”

 

Gordon snorts softly.

 

“ _It is a moment for a rugby tackle_? Did you think I was-”

 

“I thought you might not care enough to read it," Tony intervenes before he can finish the sentence. "And,” he adds, petulantly, “I _believe_ I wrote that it was a moment for a rugby tackle, _if that were possible_.”

 

Gordon almost smiles.

 

“You mean you asked nicely.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And all to no avail.”

 

“Well. Yes.”

 

“So why’re we here?”

 

Tony raises an eyebrow.

 

“To look at the flowers?”

 

They both spend a moment grinning stupidly at ornamental water-fountains, trying not to laugh.

 

“Well,” Gordon manages, finally, “whilst you’re looking at the flowers, what’re you planning to do about the Labour party?”

 

His voice is light, but Tony suddenly feels grave.

 

“Me? No, nothing. I’ve tried. I can do no more. I’m not even an MP anymore, and neither are you, and I think we should leave it to the next lot to fix this bloody mess.”

 

Gordon frowns.

 

“They-”

 

“Don’t need us, love-”

 

_Bugger, don’t call him that-_

 

“-and if they did it would be the death of the party as we know it. Remember the last time.”

 

“Kinnocks, not Callaghans.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“And I’m not your love.”

 

Tony smiles, bright and false and without meaning.

 

“Of course you are. _My love is like a red, red rose-_ ”

 

Gordon snorts. “I didn’t cite it as a favourite poem as some sort of _clue_ , Tony.”

  
“No? No. And I suppose it’d have meant Peter, really, if-”

 

Gordon stops him with a look. Then, to fill the silence-

 

“And yours- yours is _The Soldier_ , right?”

 

“That’s right, yes.”

  
Gordon smiles wholly then, eyes crinkling up into kindness.

 

“ _Laughter, learnt of friends- and gentleness, in hearts at peace-_ ”

 

“ _-under an English heaven._ ” Tony can hear his own heartbeat in his throat. “Yes. Everyone forgets that bit.”

 

He’s not one bit surprised that Gordon remembers it. Gordon understands God and poetry and war, and his memory is as long as it is bitter. Small wonder Tony misses him as he would his own voice.

 

They listen a little longer to the chattering of strangers and the falling water of the fountain, sat under the faded English sky. Gentleness. For so long a foreign concept between them. But their hearts have always been at peace here.

 

“Dinner?” Tony ventures.

  
And Gordon smiles, although not at him.

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

-

 

AFTER MR. MILIBAND

 

Peter’s voice trickles out of Tony’s phone. Another election defeat, another interview with the BBC.

 

_“...and wait for the public to realise how much they had missed us. Well, they weren’t missing us and they didn’t miss us-”_

“Shut him up,” orders a voice over Tony’s shoulder, and he jumps.

 

“Gordon- Jesus, don’t do that-”

 

He turns off the interview anyway, though, and Gordon nods in quiet, awkward gratitude.

 

“He’s still right, though,” Tony adds defensively.

 

Gordon frowns at the grass, then smiles ruefully up at him.

 

“Events, dear boy,” he mutters, very quietly, in approximately the direction of Tony’s shoulders.

 

“I’m not your dear boy,” Tony protests.

 

“No,” Gordon agrees. “It’s just an expression.”

 

Tony listens to the birds.

  
“I was supposed to be, you know,” he says, quietly. “The- the thing. With the sound. The day I first saw you.”

 

Gordon shrugs.

 

“I’m not really a manifest destiny type.”

 

A little blossom falls from the trees. It’s a truly beautiful springtime. Tony frowns.

 

“You believe in- in Him, though. And-”

 

Gordon eyes are hard.

 

“It’s not the same thing.”

 

And then he rises and leaves before Tony can argue otherwise.

 

It feels like nothing so much as a wasted opportunity. There had been so much to _say_.

 

 

 

-

 

AFTER THE LEADERSHIP CONTEST

 

Gordon won.

 

The weather is turning, and the reddening leaves shiver on the trees, and there’s no real way of getting around it; Gordon lost the election, and _still_ he has won the leadership contest.

 

Tony can never quite believe his own party's refusal to consider facts.

 

“Stop moping,” someone tells him, and the levity in his voice is such that it takes Tony a moment to recognise him.

 

“Gordon.”

 

“Hullo.”

 

“Your Miliband won.”

 

Gordon smiles, fondly, at his own hands. Tony knows better than to think the fondness is for him.

 

“Ed’s a good kid.”

 

“I agree,” says Tony, and he can hear how brittle his voice is. Gordon cocks his head.

 

“You don’t trust him?”

 

“I- No. He was a good man. A good MP, good minister. But no, not to win an election.”

 

Godon snorts, softly, through his nose.

 

“But you’d trust David?”

 

Tony hesitates.

 

“You can never tell with these things. You know how it is-”

 

“I do.”

 

“-it’s all, _Events, dear boy_.”

 

“I’m not your dear boy.”

  
“It’s just an expression.”

 

Gordon doesn’t smile, but his face is full of hope Tony wishes he had, and they can’t really say anything to each other that they want to, and when they say goodbye- _My love to Cherie_ , and _God bless, Gordon_ \- there’s something strangely wistful in it.

 

-

 

AFTER THE ELECTION

 

All these flowers in bloom, and the blue sky. The lark; the snail; God in his Heaven. And yet look how broken their hearts are.

 

“Do you blame me?”

 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

 

Gordon scowls.

 

“Yes, but- do you?”

 

Tony swallows, and looks up at the sky. It’s terribly, terribly blue. He tries to be honest.

 

“Not really. Financial crisis and all that. Though against such terrible opposition I really think you might’ve been able to do better.”

 

“And yet you don’t blame me.”

 

“A few more Alastairs would’ve helped. A little less bad luck. Not much you could’ve done better, though.”

 

“You’re sparing my feelings now.”

  
  
“I am _not_.”

 

“It was a bad campaign.”

 

“Opinions aren’t formed in the campaign-”

 

“-Only developed, yeah.”

 

Tony listens to the birdsong. A child runs past with a toy aeroplane. A dog sniffs at the daffodils.

 

“You had a lot to deal with. The bailout…”

 

“Were you proud?”

 

“Of the bailout? I was, actually. You were ma- you were good.”

 

“Tony, please stop this.”

 

“I’m being honest.”

 

“You’re being gentle.”

 

Tony smiles, tiredly.

 

“Well, then. Dinner?”

 

But Gordon shakes his head and stands; moves off amongst the flowers.

 

Tony sits on that bench until the sun sinks and the sky turns red with evening defiance, wondering if he should’ve been crueller. But he’s not going to turn into another of the voices in Gordon’s head. Not now.

 

Not again.

 

-

 

BEFORE THE RESIGNATION

 

Gordon’s voice is a rumble of soft vowels and he’s smiling, eyes soft and bright and the lines of his face creased with it and it’s making Tony giddy as it always did. He’s in the Botanical Gardens with Gordon again like it used to be, and there’s summer sun lying golden on the murmuring leaves and there’s Gordon’s smile and the roses in bright bloom and-

 

And Gordon hates him, and their friendship lies in tatters, and their government is coming apart at the seams from all the hatred and mistrust.

 

And he’s got to go, which is what Gordon is telling him, as he smiles in the sunlight and pushes the curls back from his face. Gordon’s memory is as long as it is bitter, and Gordon is stronger than Tony had been; can take him here to the gardens and face the truth. Can face the fact that all the promise and adoration of their youth is gone and bent and corrupt and broken.

 

Tony, miserably, rather loves him for that.

 

***

 

He chooses Granita-

 

_Dinner?_

_I don’t see why not_

 

-for the showdown; if he’d picked the gardens, he would never have been able to.

 

They don’t, in fact, meet in those gardens again for thirteen years.

  
***

 

THE MEETING

 

Tony paces up and down beside the lavender, listening to the hum of the bees.

 

“Hullo.”

 

Tony jumps at the sound.

 

“Mr. Gordon Brown. Con- congratulations on your election to Parliament. How’re you finding it?”

 

Mr. Brown smiles, gruffly. Tony hadn’t known it was _possible_ to smile gruffly, but then-

 

“Too damn full of Tories, for one thing. And a bit cramped, for another. You’re sharing with Dave Nellist, aren’t you?”

 

“I- yes.”

 

“How’s that?”

 

“Not fun. Look, I know it must seem forward of me, but do you think it was more than just coincidence?”

 

“Sorry, what?”

 

“That we were both elected weeks after- after talking for the first time, I mean, it’s almost like-”

 

Brown watches him with steady eyes.

 

“-like we were, you know…"

 

“Soulmates?”

  
Oh god, he’s twinkling. Gordon Brown, the quiet and serious young Hon. Member of Parliament for Dunfermline whose life Tony has in no way at all extensively researched since recognising his face on television on election night, is _twinkling_ at him and gently teasing and Tony’s cheeks warm and his head feels light.

 

“Well, everyone knows _that_ , what the sound thing means-”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

Tony stops dead.

 

“You didn’t _know_?”

 

“No.” Brown shrugs. “It’s not really something my family talked about. Or maybe it’s not really a Scottish thing. I’d never been told it before. Everyone I knew assumed I was just deaf.” A smile takes hold at the edges of his mouth. “Made it hard to bear the prospect of becoming blind as well.”

 

Tony swallows; screws up his courage and closes his eyes; takes the man’s hand. Gordon says nothing, and they sit a long time together like that in the Botanical Gardens, looking at the flowers.

 

Then Gordon turns his head, looks at Tony consideringly.

 

“Dinner?”

 

Tony smiles at him so hard he thinks his face is going to crack, and when he trusts himself to speak it's a bit breathy, a bit eager.

 

“Why not?”

 

-

 

THE FIRST TIME

 

They’ve seen each other before, here; when the air turned liquid with sound and Tony, like a skittish animal, like a child caught staring- like a fool- had bolted and run.

 

Not this time.

 

The strange young man- his soulmate or whatever- sees him across the flowers; nods, seriously.

 

“Hullo. I saw you on Monday. Funny, that thing- with the sound. The way it all floods in at once. You don’t realise how much was missing.”

 

Tony is dumb and frozen. The young Scot continues unconcerned. He’s quite handsome, Tony thinks, with that heavy jawline. He’s sort of brooding. Intense. Saturnine. His voice is lovely.

 

“Anyway, I was only down here for the week. Up to Dunfermline tomorrow.”

 

Tony burns with the need to touch him.

 

“I don’t suppose,” he begins, weakly, “That I could persuade you to stay? I mean- that is, I’m in Sedgefield myself next week, but-”

 

His soulmate frowns down into the grass.

 

“I should be here again next month.”

 

“Oh brilliant, I- what do you say to the third week of July?”

 

“The Monday, yes.”

 

Tony’s heartbeat rings in his throat as the young man walks away into the rose garden.

 

He’s going to spend the next month in Sedgefield; getting ready; getting elected; regretting not asking the young Scottish chap for his bloody _name_.

 

-

 

THE BEGINNING

 

It's warm; a beautiful day.

 

A whim brings Tony to the Botanical Gardens, to walk amongst the roses under the bright, blue-eyed morning sky.

 

The rocks seem almost to melt with the sun, and there’s a gentleman- oh, surely not out of his twenties, actually- hunched over a book. Tony is struck by the dark curls of his hair, and by the strength in his large hands and the haggardness in his tight shoulders.

 

And then Tony is struck by his laugh.

 

The first sound Tony Blair ever hears is a soft, unguarded sort of chuckle. Grizzled. Autumnal. Distinctively Scottish.

 

Somewhere amongst the bushes, someone is declaiming, “ _My love is like a red, red, rose_ -”

  
And then the birds are singing.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _O my Love's like a red, red rose_  
>  _That’s newly sprung in June;_  
>  _O my Love's like the melodie_  
>  _That’s sweetly play'd in tune._  
>   
> 
> -Robert Burns


End file.
